Reparations are payments required of the nations who have lost a war to the nations who won, for damages caused by the nations who lost.
Large reparations have sometimes caused extensive economic damage to the countries that have to pay them: for example, after the First World War the Treaty of Versailles obliged Germany to pay enormous reparations to France and the other allied nations. This compounded the already heavy costs associated with the war itself and thereby contributed significantly to the rampant inflation that afflicted the country during the 1920s and 1930s.[Citation Needed]